A smoother journey with energy resilience

As the pace of the energy transition towards connected assets and increased renewable generation quickens, the reliability and security of supply required to carry out daily operations is increasingly important. As such, interruptions to supply is an issue that can affect businesses in any industry but is undeniably more damaging and costly to industries that rely on continuous or critical operations in order to function, such, as the transport industry.

Rail reliability

The transport industry and its ability to run smoothly is something that a huge amount of people rely on in their everyday lives, with Government statistics showing that, in the period 2017/2018, 1.71 billion National Rail passenger journeys occurred in Great Britain[1]. Due to the scale of people utilising train services on a daily basis, a low security of supply and lack of energy resilience at a major transport hub has the potential to wreak havoc in the plans of many.

This is especially the case when considering the fine margins of public transport scheduling and timetables, with a one-minute delay having potentially far-reaching consequences such as leading to a missed business meeting or missed flight for a holiday further along the journey. This is something which is already happening, with Paddington Station suffering a lighting failure earlier this year which caused disruption to the Central London hub in addition to Manchester airport grinding to a halt earlier this month after a power failure prevented the refuelling of aircraft.

A seamless solution

A solution to such problems exists in the form of leading-edge energy storage solutions with integrated full Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) capabilities, exemplified by the award winning Powerstar VIRTUE. Through its full UPS capabilities, Powerstar VIRTUE can provide back up to the load in less than a millisecond of an energy-related failure, such as a blackout or brownout, occurring. For a major transport hub, this would eliminate the possibility of downtime and enable the smooth running of public transport as the energy failure would go unnoticed and would only be detected through analysis of the data post-event.

This data analysis can be taken a step further through its online remote monitoring platform. This utilises Internet of Things (IoT) technology to allow businesses to view the key performance characteristics of their Powerstar VIRTUE, and other integrated systems, from anywhere with a secure internet connection at any time. The analysis of this data can help organisations understand how to further optimise their energy profile which can lead to them unlocking insights into how additional energy management technologies such as voltage optimisation and smart distribution transformers can provide additional benefits to their sites. Furthermore, the online platform can allow users to increase the richness of their energy data and provide a more complete picture of their energy use, enabling the implementation of a comprehensive smart energy strategy.

A complete approach to energy resilience can help negate the damaging consequences of energy-related failures, this is particularly the case in high impact industries such as the transport industry. Such an approach can future-proof a business and ensure that minimal disruptions are suffered as a result of a lack of security in the local area.

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